Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit author Jeanette Winterson kills, skins and cooks rabbit 'in revenge' for the animal eating her herbs and posts the photos online

Debate: Some were upset by this picture of a rabbit Jeannete butchered and then ate

A famous author has come under fire from animal lovers after she posted photographs on Twitter of a rabbit she killed and joked how its skin would make “a great sock puppet”.

Award-winning novelist Jeanette Winterson, famed for writing Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, shocked some of her 33,000 followers by posting photos of a rabbit she had trapped, killed, skinned and cooked.

Winterson posted a photo of the dead rabbit’s bloody body lying next to its skin and head, on a chopping board with a knife just in view. She told her followers: "Rabbit ate my parsley. I am eating the rabbit.”

She then shared other photos of the skinned carcass being washed and cooked in cider with rosemary and thyme before later showing others of her cat eating a bowl of the rabbit's bloody innards.

Rabbits! At pest level they must be culled. This year is pest level in the countryside. Rabbits are sold @ market. Why not eat what u catch?

She countered her critics by telling them she had trapped the rabbit in a cage next to her parsley bed and killed it humanely, adding: "For all the Tweeters who said my cat would prefer Whiskers (where do u think pet food comes from BTW?)."

That did little to calm her critics, with one person Joanne_Steer, replying: “HUMANELY!!!! There is NO humane way to murder a sentient being. And I thought you were intelligent.”

But others defended Winterson's series of culinary posts and praised her skills.

Sian Carter tweeted: "I'm a veggie but I'd rather see you & your 'handling' of that rabbit than the massed farmed animals that aren't appreciated", while Geoff Ryman added: "a career as a celebrity chef looms!".

@prixpics In a trap next to the parsley bed. The skin which includes the head makes a great glove puppet

Gary Barker saw the lighter side of things, tweeting: "Oh no Bugs! Old Elmer got you in the end eh?", while DBanksy wrote: "homage to Beatrix Potter not going as publisher hoped".

And John Westwood tweeted: "Women being stoned to death in Lahore, girls being raped and hung in Uttar Pradesh and ppl upset about @Wintersonworld skinning a rabbit!”

A spokesman for animal charity PETA said: "Rabbits are sensitive, smart, social animals who form life-long bonds, and each has a personality in his or her own right.

"Snuffing them out for a fleeting moment of taste is arrogant, ignorant and cruel, whether they are trapped, factory farmed or shot."

With the argument rumbling on, Winterson went on BBC Radio today to justify her actions.

She told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "There are Twitter trolls, we have to remember that, some people just love to go online, they are not interested in having a debate or an argument, they just want to fire abuse. This is one of the phenomena of social media.

"But separate to that there ought to be a discussion, because I would like people to understand what it means to eat animals, if you are going to eat them.

"They are not made of fairy dust, they don't drop out of the sky."

She added: "I have got a rabbit population which is decimating my vegetable garden and my flower garden. Now, either I stand by and let that happen or I deal with it.

"I live in the country, I've lived here for 20 years, I'm going to deal with it."